LETTERS Blood in Bosnia
Sir: Boris Johnson provides some disturb- ing reflections on Douglas Hurd's motives for appeasing the Bosnian Serbs (`Douglas Hurd's public conscience', 17 April). There is another factor which might be consid- ered.
Hurd, Rifkind and their kind have suc- cessfully resisted Nato intervention to halt the slaughter, on the' grounds that the mili- tary might of Serbia could only be subdued (probably not even then) by deploying hun- dreds of thousands of troops over a period of years. I suspect this view relies more on a John Keeganesque perception of Balkan history as an unintelligible goulash of vio- lence and barbarism than on any real understanding of the history of the region and its current dire situation.
Ancillary to this confused perception is the notorious fictitious history of wartime Yugoslavia, long peddled by the Foreign Office and its friends, which, until Michael Lees came along, persuasively propagated an intrinsically improbable saga of count- less first-class German divisions held down for years by intrepid partisans. Alistair Horne, for example, believes that in 1944, `the Yugoslav partisans had suddenly trans- formed themselves from an essentially guerilla organisation into one of the most powerful, and determined, armies on the European battlefield'!
There are those, however, who have long voiced the view that in reality a determined and well-planned offensive would not take long to wipe out Serbian armour and artillery, and set their none too gallant sol- diery sprinting for the Serbian frontier. Suppose military intervention were now to take place and prove effective? It is scarcely necessary to enquire what then would be the moral position of Hurd and Rifkind, et al. What is unnerving is the thought that the possibility of such a denouement, which even the most die-hard appeaser can scarcely discount altogether, might uncon- sciously inhibit them from changing their minds pow — when it is horribly late, but still not too late.
Nikolai Tolstoy
Court Close, Southmoor, Nr Abingdon, Berkshire
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